Weird Sister (32 page)

Andrew and Francis scramble across the room, they take hold of Graeme’s legs. Graeme walks forward, dragging the boys with him. He intercepts Robert, grabbing his arm. ‘Jenny’s dead,’ he says, ‘don’t you understand?’

Robert doesn’t understand. ‘No,’ he says, ‘how can that be?’

‘She’s dead,’ he says, and if he has to, he’ll repeat it, over and over again.

Agnes comes in to the kitchen. Her entrance distracts both men. The little boys go to her, she picks them up, one under either arm.

‘What were you doing out there in the drive?’ Graeme bellows at her.

‘Walking,’ Agnes says calmly. ‘I was out for my walk.’ She carries the boys out of the kitchen and closes the door.

‘She was out there, looking at Jenny,’ Graeme splutters.

‘What do you mean?’ asks Robert.

‘She knew what Jenny had done. She was out there checking, making sure.’ Graeme stares hard at Robert, his expression changing rapidly as he thinks it through. ‘She did it,’ he shouts. ‘She’s responsible.’

Graeme rushes into the sitting room. Robert follows close behind him. ‘That’s nonsense,’ Robert says, ‘You know that can’t be true. Agnes loves Jenny, Graeme, like a sister, like she loves you and me.’

Agnes is sitting on the settee as though nothing is amiss. She is reading to the boys. She looks at Graeme, closing the book. ‘Go to your daddy,’ she says, ‘give him a hug.’ The boys climb down and go toward their father uncertainly. ‘I’ve already called the police,’ she adds.

Graeme clutches his sons to him, scowling. He wants to throttle Agnes but he controls himself. He is calm now, suddenly he is very calm, and he thinks he sees things clearly. Jenny is dead, Agnes is responsible, and Graeme is strong with this knowledge.

Robert and Graeme are pacing off the kitchen as though it’s a boxing ring. Agnes is gone, Robert has persuaded Graeme to let her take the boys to Francis’s childminder. ‘We don’t want them here today,’ he says. ‘They’ll be fine,’ he tries to placate his brother. ‘You know Agnes couldn’t harm them.’

‘Like she harmed Jenny?’ Graeme says.

‘What are you talking about? Agnes didn’t harm Jenny. She spent the night with me.’ As he says this he recalls Agnes getting out of bed like she does every night, to visit the loo. He keeps this to himself. ‘You can’t just hang someone. Don’t you think we would have heard something?’

Graeme stops walking. ‘How do you know she hanged herself? You haven’t seen her.’

Robert is shocked. It’s true, he hasn’t been upstairs. But he has seen her, he knows he has. Through Graeme? In his dream? ‘Agnes told me,’ he says, convincing himself, ‘Agnes told me.’

‘Do you think Jenny – our Jenny, our little sister –’ says Graeme, ‘would kill herself? Would commit suicide?’

‘Well, no,’ says Robert and, suddenly, he begins to shake. He is thinking, trying to think. He changes his mind. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘What else could have happened? We have no way of knowing what goes on in other people’s heads. Not even our sister, Graeme. Not even family,’ he says, now shaking uncontrollably.

Two policemen arrive at the back door. ‘Graeme?’ says PC Shorter. Robert and Graeme both know him, he’s a Warboys man like them.

They stop pacing and stare at the policeman. PC Shorter is disconcerted, he’s never noticed how alike Graeme and Robert Throckmorton are. He frowns. ‘Someone reported a murder?’

‘A murder?’ Robert asks. His knees weaken. He sits down heavily and puts his head in his hands.

‘Someone called it in,’ says Shorter.

‘It’s Jenny,’ says Graeme. ‘She’s hanged herself. I cut her down.’

‘You should know better than to tamper with a scene,’ says Shorter.

‘Shut the fuck up, Shorty,’ replies Graeme as he leads him to the stairs. ‘It’s not a “scene”. She’s my sister.’

‘I don’t want to see her,’ says Robert, speaking quietly. ‘I don’t want to have to see her.’

‘That’s all right, Mr Throckmorton,’ says the other, younger, constable. ‘You don’t need to go up there. Shorty will handle it. Shorty will take care of everything.’

Agnes comes into the kitchen, back from delivering the boys. She stands behind Robert in his chair and he leans against her, pressing the back of his head into her abdomen. ‘Two down,’ she says.

‘What?’ Robert thinks he’s misheard her. He has pulled out his handkerchief and is blowing his nose. His eyes feel puffy and sore, as though in anticipation of weeping.

‘Two Throckmortons dead. First Karen, now Jenny.’

‘I can’t think about it. Jenny.’

‘It’s my fault,’ Agnes says, her voice even.

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s my fault. We meet, we marry, we are both so happy – and look what it brings us. Look what I’ve brought to this family.’

The young constable wants to make himself small in this moment, although that doesn’t stop him from listening. He thinks Agnes is gorgeous.

‘Oh Agnes, don’t say that,’ says Robert. ‘Without you I couldn’t cope. Without you, I couldn’t go on.’

‘It’s my fault.’

‘Don’t say that.’ Robert spins round in his seat. He takes Agnes’s hands, pressing them tightly to his bruised lips. ‘Don’t even think it.’

‘It’s what they’ll be saying.’

‘Who?’

‘Just wait. It’s what they’ll be saying. Soon.’

Robert stands, drawing himself up straight, taking Agnes in his arms, holding her. ‘I’ve got you,’ he says, ‘you’ve got me.’

‘I think we should go upstairs,’ says Agnes. ‘I think we should see her.’

‘You do?’

Agnes nods.

Robert is silent for a moment. ‘All right,’ he says. He draws a deep breath.

They leave the room and the constable can’t help but think this scene was for his benefit.

Upstairs Jenny is laid out where Graeme lowered her, on her bed. She could be asleep except for the fact that she only ever slept buried under blankets and duvets, even in summer. ‘She’ll be cold,’ Robert says, and Shorty prevents him from stepping nearer. ‘She was always cold at night.’ Her flannel night-gown comes down to her ankles and she has on her slippers and, so covered, she looks very young and chaste. Her face is a little blue and there are red marks around her neck but the light is low enough for the onlookers not to have to dwell on that.

Her bedroom is tidy, apart from an array of unlit candles all at different stages of their burning. ‘She likes candles,’ Robert says, now standing at the foot of the bed. ‘She’s always asking me to get them for her. There’s a shop in London – I –’ he turns to the officer and stops speaking. Agnes holds him.

‘What do you want us to do?’ Shorty asks Graeme, his tone respectful.

‘I don’t know,’ says Graeme, shaking his head.

‘We’ll have to have an autopsy . . . the coroner . . . you know.’

‘I know,’ says Graeme. ‘I know.’

Elizabeth

That evening, the very day they found Jenny, I opened the door of my cottage to Agnes. It was raining hard, it had been raining since lunchtime, and she was standing beneath a large black umbrella wearing a hat and a scarf and a beautifully cut raincoat. It was made of navy blue rubberized cotton and it must have cost a lot of money. I stood there without speaking, as if the sight of the coat had ruled out plain conversation.

‘Elizabeth,’ Agnes said, business-like. ‘May I come in?’

I had heard from Marlene that there had been a police car and an ambulance at the Throckmortons’ that morning, she had rung the Trevelyans to tell me. My first instinct had been to go round to see what was wrong, to see if I could help, but we’d gone beyond that, the Throckmortons and me. I kept my head down all day; if word of what had happened was out in the village I didn’t want to hear it that way. I couldn’t say I was glad to see Agnes, but I was surprised.

We went into the sitting room. That weekend I had had another round of attempting to re-arrange the furniture but the room still looked out-of-sorts. Agnes stood in the doorway and took it in, without saying a word. I felt she breathed disapproval, pity even, at my attempt at interior decoration. But she took me by the hand. ‘Let’s sit over here, shall we?’ she said, directing me toward the settee.

Her hand was warm and soft, she stroked my skin lightly with her thumb. ‘I’ve got some bad news.’

‘What?’ I said. I felt annoyed.

‘It’s Jenny.’

‘What?’ I said again. ‘Tell me. Tell me quickly.’

Agnes looked into my eyes. She held me with her gaze. ‘Jenny is dead. She’s hanged herself. Graeme found her in her room this morning.’

I’ll say it now and get it over with; my first thought on hearing the news was about myself. I hadn’t done enough. I had failed once again. I hadn’t seen it coming and now she – Jenny – was dead. I thought of those other young women, Elaine Warner and Gillian Collins. How could I get things so wrong, over and over again? I looked at Agnes. She was waiting for me to say something. ‘I should have tried harder to help her.’

‘It’s got nothing to do with you.’ She spoke sharply.

‘You’re right,’ I said, embarrassed, ‘of course.’

‘I thought you should know. Robert asked me to come and tell you.’

‘That was good of him. He must be devastated.’ Why is it that the words we use at times like these seem so inappropriate?

‘Yes.’

‘The boys? Are the boys all right?’ I thought of them, their little heads, their little hands and feet.

‘They are going to stay with Karen’s mother. Graeme’s agreed they should go away for a while. I think it’s best if they are kept safe.’

‘Safe?’

‘Away from Graeme.’

‘Graeme?’

‘You’ve had your own suspicions about Graeme, haven’t you Elizabeth?’

‘Yes, but –’

‘He killed Karen.’

‘She –’

‘He pushed her and she fell and she is dead.’

I couldn’t tell what Agnes was getting at. Either Jenny hanged herself or she did not and someone did it for her. But Graeme, Graeme couldn’t be capable of such a thing. Karen, well, she was his wife and he’d been having an affair and she was angry – that doesn’t mean she deserved it, but these things have a way of happening. Men kill their wives and girlfriends. But Jenny, not Jenny, his little sister.

‘I’d better get back.’ Agnes got up to leave.

‘No,’ I said, ‘wait a minute.’ I took a breath. I don’t know where I got the courage to ask this question, it came from somewhere deep inside me. ‘Can you tell me, please tell me Agnes – are you and Graeme having an affair?’

Agnes gave me a terrible, cold look.

‘It’s just that, well, that’s what Karen told me the night she died.’

Agnes sighed. ‘You wouldn’t have thought Karen was a jealous woman, would you?’ She took my hand again. ‘Elizabeth, who is your most prized friend in the world?’

I tried to draw my hand away. She wouldn’t let me. ‘You know the answer to that Agnes.’

She nodded. ‘Say it.’

‘Robert,’ I said, ‘Robert. Your husband.’

‘You know him, and you know what he’s like, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘And do you think that I could cheat on him?’

I looked at her. I thought she was mad. She had hold of my hand and she was staring hard at me, concentrating, as though willing me to believe her, as though if she held on to me for long enough I would have to believe her. Determined, not desperate. My pulse picked up its pace. I took a deep breath and pulled my hand away from her grasp. ‘I don’t know, Agnes.’

She turned abruptly toward the door. Looking back at me, her eyes flashed black and green and black. Then she was composed, yet again. She retrieved her umbrella. ‘We will let you know when the funeral will take place.’ And she left.

I don’t know why Agnes wanted me to believe her that night. It had been demonstrated to me very clearly – by Agnes, by Robert, by Jenny – that what I thought about that family didn’t matter one bit. I suppose it was good of her to come out to tell me what had happened, but I didn’t feel grateful at the time. And I didn’t believe that she couldn’t cheat on Robert; I knew that she’d been having an affair with Graeme, Karen’s words and then her death convinced me of that. It was almost as though Agnes came to me hoping for my support, hoping to prove to herself that, despite everything, I was her friend. But at the same time I couldn’t believe that she would care one way or the other.

Once she was gone I moved back into my sitting room. I sat down on my parents’ settee. Oh Jenny, I thought, Jenny. What happened? What should I have done to help you? And Gillian Collins. And Elaine Warner. What should I have done?

About an hour later – it was nine o’clock, I was about to watch the news, I couldn’t think what else to do with myself, I was in a state of shock, torn between wanting to go to Robert and knowing I could not – there was a knock at my door. I almost didn’t hear it, it was so tentative, one faint clack of the knocker. I got up and looked out the window, but couldn’t see anything. I picked up the poker from beside the fire. I stood beside the door and spoke loudly, ‘Who is it?’

‘It’s Lolly, Elizabeth, Lolly Senior.’

I opened the door. There was Lolly, black mascara streaked down her face. She rushed in and with her brought the cold night air. She stood in the door to my sitting room, hugging herself in her great black coat, a beret pulled down over her ears.

‘Have you h–heard,’ she asked, her voice cracking, ‘h–have you heard what’s happened?

I nodded and stepped toward her.

She recoiled. ‘No one b–believes me,’ her voice was uneven and raw, ‘no one will listen to what I have to say. I thought you m–might – I thought – I know that you cared about Jenny, that you . . . I couldn’t go to her family. I n–need to tell someone, I can’t go to the police, they won’t believe me, no one believes me . . .’

I put my arm around her and squeezed hard, as though that might cut off the stuttering words. It did.

I took Lolly upstairs to the bathroom. I sat her down, got out my face cream and some cotton wool and cleaned her face. I gave her a warm damp flannel which she twisted around and around in her hands. Neither of us spoke. I gave her a towel. We went back downstairs and I made her a cup of tea. We sat in the kitchen. I suddenly felt wary of taking her to the room where Agnes had been, as though she might have left something behind, something malevolent, something that could see and hear what Lolly had to say.